free-range politics, organic community

OT ~ Welcome to Saturday!

Sit-a-while
on swinging porch
where tin-dippers and
sweet water
in cool touches
meet lips
from hand dug wells.

Good morning good people!

Morning poem: a work-in-progress

Coming, left and right

in cellphone locksteps

predicted

towering spew

its truth

on touchscreens

by thumbs at night

not funny

these clowns

dancing in pollution from troughs of intoxication

sloshing into streets of blight

alien frights

in blinking lights

of debauchery

receipts of understanding once demanded

ignored, cursively

as forests burn

waves churn

fish remanded to

tasty plastics

in salty seas of urbanity

in newfound glee

pardoning celebrity

cause

who's on first

in Nuclear heaven

until...as written

the moon, the mother, the ice-giver

freezes sons

that burn in Washingtons.

Morning art: very pleased to present the photography of my new friend, Victoria. We share mutual, best friends.

Wild Ponies of Grayson Highlands, a few days hike north from us along the spine of the Appalachian Trail.

Morning music:

We all need a little peace:

fun/excitement

uniqueness

distant vibrations

a little piano

some passion

and, an old Volkswagen bus for mind travel

“A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.”
~ Lewis Mumford

By 10:30 am, Eastern, i'll be off floating down a four-hour section of the New River where no sight of man obscures today's Autumn view with my eighty-year-old conservative friend who recently purchased a used john-boat just for us; not to worry, i'm guiding.

I'll get back to comments later; hoping everyone has a fruitful and enjoyable Saturday and weekend!

Comments

Happy John boatin' that's what I say. Cheers Smiley7.
Be the water, not the rock. Go with the flow.

Or the fire hose: Russians scanned California election systems in 2016, state officials learn
LOL! Being "scanned" is "attempting to hack" now? Golly gee, I cannot believe how technically ignorant the politicians appear to me. A++ Network Test should be minimum requirement from Dog Catcher to El Presidente, any servant that interfaces a network, that would make amerika great again. Not tools like Alex Padilla spewing nonsense at the Idiocracy. Please. Anyone who can read can understand networks and computer technology, no degree needed. High School education and good reading comprehension, that is all.

Russian entities attempted to hack into California election systems last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told state officials Friday, prompting Secretary of State Alex Padilla to complain that officials had not shared the information earlier.

“Today, my office was informed for the first time by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that ‘Russian cyber actors’ ‘scanned’ California’s internet-facing systems in 2016,” Padilla said in a statement. “Our office actively monitors scanning activity as part of our routine cybersecurity protocols. We have no information or evidence that our systems have been breached in any way or that any voter information was compromised.

“It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information,” Padilla added. “The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.”

Funny coincidence this news, after that hilarious Driving US Crazy youtube by what's his name Freeman. Bernays would be proud of the Public Relations campaign, good effort by the D Party to make someone everyone else the enemy. Oogie boogie!

Happy John boatin' that's what I say. Cheers Smiley7.
Be the water, not the rock. Go with the flow.

Or the fire hose: Russians scanned California election systems in 2016, state officials learn
LOL! Being "scanned" is "attempting to hack" now? Golly gee, I cannot believe how technically ignorant the politicians appear to me. A++ Network Test should be minimum requirement from Dog Catcher to El Presidente, any servant that interfaces a network, that would make amerika great again. Not tools like Alex Padilla spewing nonsense at the Idiocracy. Please. Anyone who can read can understand networks and computer technology, no degree needed. High School education and good reading comprehension, that is all.

Russian entities attempted to hack into California election systems last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told state officials Friday, prompting Secretary of State Alex Padilla to complain that officials had not shared the information earlier.

“Today, my office was informed for the first time by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that ‘Russian cyber actors’ ‘scanned’ California’s internet-facing systems in 2016,” Padilla said in a statement. “Our office actively monitors scanning activity as part of our routine cybersecurity protocols. We have no information or evidence that our systems have been breached in any way or that any voter information was compromised.

“It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information,” Padilla added. “The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.”

Funny coincidence this news, after that hilarious Driving US Crazy youtube by what's his name Freeman. Bernays would be proud of the Public Relations campaign, good effort by the D Party to make someone everyone else the enemy. Oogie boogie!

Bringing this over from another thread, with some editing. Any emphasis added will be mine.

Homeland Security tied together the false Russia hacking claim and the false claim of a need for the public/private agency to take over absolute control of all electoral infrastructure and information, using its own hacks, claimed (edit: as Russian) in the face of the known fact that they themselves were attempting to hack into the electoral apparatus.

Now, of course all electoral infrastructure has been placed under Top Secret Homeland Security control by Obama, before leaving office... trampling Habeas Corpus Corpses underfoot en route. Whadda guy!

An attempted hack into Georgia's voter registration database was traced back to the Department of Homeland Security, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

A third-party security firm working for the state detected the unsuccessful breach and linked it to an IP address associated with DHS, the report said. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp reportedly sent a letter to Homeland Security asking the department to confirm whether an attempt was made.

In his letter, The Wall Street Journal reported, Kemp asked the department to confirm whether a scan attempt was made, who authorized the scan and whether the department was scanning other state systems without authorization.

Leading up to the election, questions were raised about the security of state computer systems that protect voting data. Homeland Security reportedly considered declaring election systems as "critical infrastructure," which would have given the federal agency the authority to protect the systems. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately respond to the publication's request for comment.

In an unbelievable development that ought to outrage every single American, election officials in Georgia are essentially accusing the Obama administration of attempting to hack into the state’s electronic balloting machines in what appears to be a naked political ploy. ...

... As reported by WSBTV in Atlanta, the Georgia secretary of state, Brian Kemp, is demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security after election officials there traced nearly a dozen hacking attempts back to the agency.

Kemp, in an interview with the local news, said he was “mad as hell” after what he described as a massive cyberattack on the state’s electronic balloting network were traced back to a DHS IP address. ...

... During the interview a visibly frustrated Kemp confirmed attacks of varying levels on his agency’s network over the previous 10 months, all of which were traced back to DHS Internet Service Provider addresses.

“We’re being told something that they think they have it figured out, yet nobody’s really showed us how this happened,” Kemp said. “We need to know.”

Not coincidentally, the hacks occurred during a time when DHS was attempting to convince states they needed the Obama administration to help them monitor their electronic balloting to help guard against ‘Russian hacking.’

It just so happens that Georgia was one of the primary states DHS had approached.

The first hack occurred on Feb. 2, the following day after Georgia’s voter registration deadline passed. The next attack took place just a few days before the SEC primary.

Then another attack came in May, one day before Georgia’s general primary; two more followed in November, the day before and the day after the Nov. 8 general election. ...

... Sounds like the Obama administration has been working on their fake post-election narrative, “The Russians hacked the election for Trump!” for months now.

As for DHS, Kemp says the agency keeps changing its story.

“First it was an employee in Corpus Christi, and now it’s a contractor in Georgia,” Kemp said. ...

Homeland Security Notifies 21 States of Election Hacking
09-23-2017
The federal government on Friday told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems before last year's presidential election.

The notification came roughly a year after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia. The states that told The Associated Press they had been targeted included some key political battlegrounds, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The AP contacted every state election office to determine which ones had been informed that their election systems had been targeted. The others confirming were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington. ...

According to a report published by the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group, the Department of Homeland Security, under the Obama administration, attempted to hack the Indiana State electoral system nearly 15,000 times. The news comes in the wake of months of post-election talk the Russians helped Donald Trump get elected, thwarting any chance of Hillary Clinton to win in November of 2016.

Yet even with the bipartisan parade of politicians, including former president Barack H. Obama, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and others, the American people have not been presented one shred of evidence to suggest the Russians attempted to meddle with the elections. Free thinkers everywhere are scratching their heads, and asking themselves if they’re supposed to believe the so-called leaders in Washington, without being presented with any proof the Kremlin had anything to do with Clinton’s loss.

The bully in Washington may have used his executive powers to go after states such as Indiana, that “resisted then-President Barack Obama’s attempt to increase federal involvement in state and local election systems by designating them as ‘critical infrastructure’ for national security,” writes DCNF’s Richard Pollack. To better describe the hacking attempt, Pollack described it as a “scanning assault.” ...

... Seemingly miffed by the IT intrusion is Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, who also serves as president of NASS. She told Pollack, “we know that between November 1 and December 16, we were scanned with about 14,800 scans, nearly 15,000 different times,” an action which was traced back to a Department of Homeland Security computer’s IP address, which was the same system used to hack into Georgia’s electoral system as well, making it the second time the federal government has been implicated in attempting to hack into state election systems. She points the finger squarely at the Obama administration’s DHS, saying she believed the scans were possibly retaliatory since the state chose not to allow DHS to get their hands on Indiana’s electoral infrastructure. “We declined their assistance,” she said but added, “our voter registration system was not penetrated.”...

... In terms of proof, the only evidence presented, which indicates the Election of 2016 was tampered with, is coming from sovereign states, two of whom are now pointing the finger at the Obama administration’s DHS, for attempting to hack their own state’s system. It must be plainly stated. Factually speaking, the Department of Homeland Security has twice been implicated in election hacking, not the Russians. ...

... There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Benghazi wasn’t the result of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islam film. And no, not yet do we believe the Russians hacked the Election of 2016, although two reports indicate our own federal government most certainly did. Ironically, DHS has yet to comment on the accusations coming from Georgia and Indiana, a notable silence which appears to be deafening.

It actually sounds as though Homeland Security was determined to get into the election apparatus by hook or by crook at strategic moments during the election process and was unable to get through at least some state's defenses when access was denied by officials. And now it has control over them all.

And edited to (I hope, lol) fix a block-quote and remove a word from my last comment.

Happy John boatin' that's what I say. Cheers Smiley7.
Be the water, not the rock. Go with the flow.

Or the fire hose: Russians scanned California election systems in 2016, state officials learn
LOL! Being "scanned" is "attempting to hack" now? Golly gee, I cannot believe how technically ignorant the politicians appear to me. A++ Network Test should be minimum requirement from Dog Catcher to El Presidente, any servant that interfaces a network, that would make amerika great again. Not tools like Alex Padilla spewing nonsense at the Idiocracy. Please. Anyone who can read can understand networks and computer technology, no degree needed. High School education and good reading comprehension, that is all.

Russian entities attempted to hack into California election systems last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told state officials Friday, prompting Secretary of State Alex Padilla to complain that officials had not shared the information earlier.

“Today, my office was informed for the first time by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that ‘Russian cyber actors’ ‘scanned’ California’s internet-facing systems in 2016,” Padilla said in a statement. “Our office actively monitors scanning activity as part of our routine cybersecurity protocols. We have no information or evidence that our systems have been breached in any way or that any voter information was compromised.

“It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information,” Padilla added. “The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.”

Funny coincidence this news, after that hilarious Driving US Crazy youtube by what's his name Freeman. Bernays would be proud of the Public Relations campaign, good effort by the D Party to make someone everyone else the enemy. Oogie boogie!

Peace and Love

up

1 user has voted.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@smiley7
Sorry I could not resist saying it. Those photos are quite stunning, the colors amazing. There was a pony before things fell apart when I was a kid, her name was Midnight but we called her Corn Pone, from Li'l Abner I think. Twinkle Toes the donkey, and Corn Pone the pony. Life was good.

Next thought was buck brush and brambles, ouchy. How do they protect their noses and legs while posing in that pokey sticky stuff? They are beautiful, that white mane omg. Thanks a lot.

been a few years since i've hiked the AT through Grayson Highlands where the ponies roam, free. need to get back there someday, soon.

#2 Sorry I could not resist saying it. Those photos are quite stunning, the colors amazing. There was a pony before things fell apart when I was a kid, her name was Midnight but we called her Corn Pone, from Li'l Abner I think. Twinkle Toes the donkey, and Corn Pone the pony. Life was good.

Next thought was buck brush and brambles, ouchy. How do they protect their noses and legs while posing in that pokey sticky stuff? They are beautiful, that white mane omg. Thanks a lot.

and toss out those "lifelines" to late-explain. Total BS, of course. Somewhat like those orange life rings that are hard and could cause drownings by head bonks. Floating down a river seems like a good project. I broke up with a boyfriend who took me canoeing on the Ohio River in a Naugahyde-wrapped canoe. Paddling against the current, even on a river full of dams, is hard work.

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6 users have voted.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Good to see you. Yep, paddling can be a lot of work. i actually prefer rowing, easy to me, especially when hunting fish and navigating rapids, but my old friend is set in his ways, so he sits in back and steers while i paddle up front. When fishing large enough rivers, we usually float as much as possible, going with the flow, catch many more fish that way.

My friend is a grumpy one and we've been fishing together for years both salt and fresh water, a kind of keystone cop duo, pulling legs at every opportunity.

Looking forward to the blue skis and 76 degrees, a perfect day.

Hope your day is splendid, too!

and toss out those "lifelines" to late-explain. Total BS, of course. Somewhat like those orange life rings that are hard and could cause drownings by head bonks. Floating down a river seems like a good project. I broke up with a boyfriend who took me canoeing on the Ohio River in a Naugahyde-wrapped canoe. Paddling against the current, even on a river full of dams, is hard work.

One outrage after another as if people won't remember where the problem lies.

Have a nice boat trip Smiley. We are up north and my BIL & SIL are with us for the weekend. The project for today is to build two wooden chairs that we can plant on our beach. It is supposed to be 89 today with zero chance of rain. Guess what, early am sprinkles. MI weather is pretty unpredictable. Throw in on the shore of the Great Lakes and no one knows.

Nothing like a beautiful day on the Great lakes; have fond memories of my times in those waters, there is a cleanliness to the soft breeze i recall and walking in knee-high grasses.

Do enjoy the pleasure of nature and family and give my regards to the Wyandot.

One outrage after another as if people won't remember where the problem lies.

Have a nice boat trip Smiley. We are up north and my BIL & SIL are with us for the weekend. The project for today is to build two wooden chairs that we can plant on our beach. It is supposed to be 89 today with zero chance of rain. Guess what, early am sprinkles. MI weather is pretty unpredictable. Throw in on the shore of the Great Lakes and no one knows.

In the collaboration between the Deep-State and the MSM, I think it's hard for many to comprehend what the Deep State is and how it works. But the DS might be better uncovered if the MSM were dismantled first. Everyone knows who Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow are, but there's little energy invested in direct criticism of them and the role they play in propping up the oligarchy. Maybe there should be more active resistance directed at targeting a few of the propaganda artists who deceive so many. A bit like knocking down the wall surrounding the castle and leaping over the moat created by these Info-minders (and apologists for the 1%) before storming the Castle itself. The sense of powerlessness and loss experienced by so many people today is reinforced by the moat of these pubic opinion ministries -- whose questions and comments reflect only one side: eg., how will we find the money to pay for your healthcare -- not how could we spend $70 billion dollars on the war machine? Or with Her, how can we ever forgive the Russians and James Comey for preventing her coronation -- not why did the Clinton Foundation collaborate with the Russians -- and what about the absolution that Comey provided in July which enabled Clinton to enter the Dem convention as innocent and pure as the driven snow -- wearing her white costumes and raising her hands like an evangelical minister? Colbert on late night TV - Maddow, Hayes, Todd - these are the figures who want to focus their audiences on the grave injustices committed toward Her -- not the injustices experienced by everyone else that would occur regardless of whether Trump or Her were elected. They would have us all believe that resistance against Trump is the only action possible. Her Royal Highness would have operated more in the mode of Obama -- pretty speeches and lip service to human rights while fueling the war machine and singing the songs of how we can't afford health care and free college. Time to actively protest the media itself for its shameful role in beating the drum for the neolibs and for refusing to tackle the real issues that concern the people whom they herd like sheep into the corral of misinformation and one-sided reasoning. The prevalence of counter-cultural work in the 60's -- of protest songs, street theater, plays and even TV shows questioning the ruling order -- had a lot to do with changing people's minds. We are not prepared to win direct battles against the militarized state -- but can we succeed in bringing down it's minders?

Driving stakes though the heartlessness of the propaganda machine conning the public should be one of the main issues; the only real control exerted over the 99% by those leading them to act against their own best interests has been through perception control, via 'now-legalized' propaganda used against them by their own corrupted government and the Clinton-enabled monopolistic corporate media concentration, which I believe to be at least in part kept sweet and pumping out the party lines fed to them by the promise of endless campaign-laundered money in the predominately corporate/billionaire-supplied billions. (Why else have that notorious perpetual political campaigning unseen elsewhere and what must be far and away the world's most expensive elections, predominately due to corporate media advertising costs, if not to keep both the public perceptions warped and directed where desired and to keep a fairly steady supply of Big Money flowing into private companies giving out The Right Talking Points and spin as desired, with perception-bending BS different from the rest of the world's news, as 'news'?)

We know this, just as much of the public rightfully distrusts the corporate media, that being why so much of the once-trusted and once-independent media has been bullied/blackmailed/bribed into collaboration with the propagandists in order to make this seem more convincing.

This needs to be a country-wide, long-running pacific protest target. Too bad so many once-left organizations are now being corporate-funded and controlled, but at the moment, there's still the internet. We need to use it before we lose it!

Some people here are/have been involved with Occupy? Flash mobs? What other still-uncorrupted groups can anyone with a better brain think of?

I hope you're doing a brainstorming thread on this... this needs immediate attention, like freaking years ago!

Enough with the fake news 'fake newsing' the facts - truth exists, independent of recognition or acceptance. And the lies are literally killing us all.

Edited for two missed words... sigh...

In the collaboration between the Deep-State and the MSM, I think it's hard for many to comprehend what the Deep State is and how it works. But the DS might be better uncovered if the MSM were dismantled first. Everyone knows who Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow are, but there's little energy invested in direct criticism of them and the role they play in propping up the oligarchy. Maybe there should be more active resistance directed at targeting a few of the propaganda artists who deceive so many. A bit like knocking down the wall surrounding the castle and leaping over the moat created by these Info-minders (and apologists for the 1%) before storming the Castle itself. The sense of powerlessness and loss experienced by so many people today is reinforced by the moat of these pubic opinion ministries -- whose questions and comments reflect only one side: eg., how will we find the money to pay for your healthcare -- not how could we spend $70 billion dollars on the war machine? Or with Her, how can we ever forgive the Russians and James Comey for preventing her coronation -- not why did the Clinton Foundation collaborate with the Russians -- and what about the absolution that Comey provided in July which enabled Clinton to enter the Dem convention as innocent and pure as the driven snow -- wearing her white costumes and raising her hands like an evangelical minister? Colbert on late night TV - Maddow, Hayes, Todd - these are the figures who want to focus their audiences on the grave injustices committed toward Her -- not the injustices experienced by everyone else that would occur regardless of whether Trump or Her were elected. They would have us all believe that resistance against Trump is the only action possible. Her Royal Highness would have operated more in the mode of Obama -- pretty speeches and lip service to human rights while fueling the war machine and singing the songs of how we can't afford health care and free college. Time to actively protest the media itself for its shameful role in beating the drum for the neolibs and for refusing to tackle the real issues that concern the people whom they herd like sheep into the corral of misinformation and one-sided reasoning. The prevalence of counter-cultural work in the 60's -- of protest songs, street theater, plays and even TV shows questioning the ruling order -- had a lot to do with changing people's minds. We are not prepared to win direct battles against the militarized state -- but can we succeed in bringing down it's minders?

up

0 users have voted.

—

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

In the collaboration between the Deep-State and the MSM, I think it's hard for many to comprehend what the Deep State is and how it works. But the DS might be better uncovered if the MSM were dismantled first. Everyone knows who Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow are, but there's little energy invested in direct criticism of them and the role they play in propping up the oligarchy. Maybe there should be more active resistance directed at targeting a few of the propaganda artists who deceive so many. A bit like knocking down the wall surrounding the castle and leaping over the moat created by these Info-minders (and apologists for the 1%) before storming the Castle itself. The sense of powerlessness and loss experienced by so many people today is reinforced by the moat of these pubic opinion ministries -- whose questions and comments reflect only one side: eg., how will we find the money to pay for your healthcare -- not how could we spend $70 billion dollars on the war machine? Or with Her, how can we ever forgive the Russians and James Comey for preventing her coronation -- not why did the Clinton Foundation collaborate with the Russians -- and what about the absolution that Comey provided in July which enabled Clinton to enter the Dem convention as innocent and pure as the driven snow -- wearing her white costumes and raising her hands like an evangelical minister? Colbert on late night TV - Maddow, Hayes, Todd - these are the figures who want to focus their audiences on the grave injustices committed toward Her -- not the injustices experienced by everyone else that would occur regardless of whether Trump or Her were elected. They would have us all believe that resistance against Trump is the only action possible. Her Royal Highness would have operated more in the mode of Obama -- pretty speeches and lip service to human rights while fueling the war machine and singing the songs of how we can't afford health care and free college. Time to actively protest the media itself for its shameful role in beating the drum for the neolibs and for refusing to tackle the real issues that concern the people whom they herd like sheep into the corral of misinformation and one-sided reasoning. The prevalence of counter-cultural work in the 60's -- of protest songs, street theater, plays and even TV shows questioning the ruling order -- had a lot to do with changing people's minds. We are not prepared to win direct battles against the militarized state -- but can we succeed in bringing down it's minders?